


Such Brainsick Fantasies

by draculard



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Body Exploration, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Masturbation (but only sort of), Parent/Child Incest, Polyjuice Potion, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-14 23:44:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20609312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: In the summer of his Fifth Year, Harry discovers a lock of Lily's hair in the Dursleys' attic.





	Such Brainsick Fantasies

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Jocasta's monologue in Oedipus Rex.

He finds a lock of Lily’s hair in the attic of 12 Privet Drive the summer of his fifth year, when everyone is so busy ignoring him that he has nothing better to do than explore the Dursleys’ attic. It’s wrapped up inside a bundle of letters addressed to Petunia; they look untouched, and some of them aren’t even open — and Harry wouldn’t have opened them either, if he hadn’t seen his mother’s name on the envelope. 

Later on, he’ll struggle to remember anything his mother wrote to Petunia. It’s all erased by the moment he found that lock of long red hair tied in a green ribbon. The moment when he unfolded another yellowed piece of paper and watched that lock of hair drift to the dusty floor is frozen in his memory. He doesn’t need a Pensieve; he can rewatch it any time he wants.

He kneels on the old creaky floorboards and holds his mother’s hair in his palm.

He thinks, deliriously, _ So this is what she feels like. _But it isn’t, of course. Holding a lock of hair in his palm doesn’t tell him anything about what Lily felt like — how it felt when she held him, how it felt when she hugged him. Whether her skin was soft, whether her hair tickled his face when he tucked his head against her neck.

When he leaves for Hogwarts from Grimmauld Place, that lock of hair isn’t in his trunk. It’s in the pocket of his jeans, next to his wand, where he can subtly put his hand and feel it without anybody knowing.

He doesn’t tell Ron and Hermione about it.

He’s not sure why.

* * *

If anyone asked Harry why he decided to brew a Polyjuice Potion his fifth year — or how he managed to find the time between OWLS and Occlumency and DA — he couldn’t tell them. All he knows is that there’s something soothing and familiar about the potion-brewing lab the Room of Requirement conjures for him, about the foul scent of the potion itself in the air.

He’s not stupid; he remembers well enough how the potion is brewed from when Hermione did it in second year. He tells himself he’s doing this strictly for practice — as an exercise in self-sufficiency, perhaps — or because it’s useful, because he might need it now that Voldemort’s back.

But when the Polyjuice Potion is finished, Harry looks up and sees that the Room of Requirement has supplied him with a mirror, and he fishes Lily’s lock of hair out of his pocket automatically, without thinking.

He extracts a single red strand from the ribbon.

He drops it into the Polyjuice Potion and watches it sink in.

Feeling strangely numb and strangely distant (_perfect conditions for an Occlumency lesson, _he thinks wryly), he takes a drink.

* * *

The transformation is as painful as his last. He feels his bones pop and shrink; he watches his skin bubble and melt under unfathomable heat as it changes shades. His spine cracks and realigns itself; his ribs push inward, aching miserably, stabbing into his lungs a moment before they change, too.

And then it’s over, leaving him with nothing but the memory of pain and a new face staring at him from the mirror.

An oval face with bow-shaped lips, paler than his, with freckles along the cheeks and nose and red hair hanging on either side like curtains. 

The eyes are, as everyone keeps telling him, the same.

“Lily,” Harry breathes, and for the first time he can remember, he hears her voice. Not screaming, not afraid, and not in pain. Her voice is sweet and deeper than he’d thought, almost husky.

The face staring back at him is that of a woman — fully grown but shockingly young. He’s come to think of his parents as the same age as Sirius and Lupin and Snape. He sees them in his head as middle-aged, fitter and better-looking than the Dursleys but still comfortably old, reassuringly wise. 

But this woman is twenty-one years old and she looks it. She could be one of Harry’s classmates. She could be one of his friends.

He touches his cheek, watching the dainty hand move in the mirror. Lily’s skin is soft. He knew it would be.

He drags her manicured nails down his chin and then the column of his throat, noting the absence of his Adam’s apple, the smoothness of his skin. Her collar bones don’t stick out like his do, though her waist is smaller, feeling almost cinched between his hands. 

Watching himself in the mirror, his eyes almost glowing with intent, he slips his hands under his shirt and feels the smooth, soft planes of Lily’s stomach, already lean after Harry’s birth. He feels her ribs, tangible only when he stretches to the side and holds his breath.

He feels her breasts.

_ I fed from these, _he thinks almost clinically, watching himself in the mirror. He lifts his shirt and looks down at Lily’s pale pink nipples, admires how they stand out against her creamy skin. When he pinches them, all he sees are Lily’s slender fingers and Lily’s breasts, and he feels a pang of disconnection, like he’s watching all of this take place inside a dream.

He tries to imagine what it would feel like to hold a baby to those breasts, to feel a child’s gums closing ‘round the nipple looking for milk. He pinches himself again and watches blood rise to the surface in a flush. He supposes that’s the closest he’ll ever get.

He looks into the mirror and smiles with Lily’s face. It looks too watery, too nervous.

He opens his mouth and hears her say, “I love you, Harry.”

His voice is choked. It comes out wrong. It doesn’t sound like Lily at all.

He tries again, but all he says is, “Harry,” and it sounds just like a scream.


End file.
